Marine stereo

If anyone in the thomasville/ Tallahassee area is in the market to add or upgrade a marine stereo, I had a great experience with Greg. He’s been installing stereos for 25 years and recently changed occupations. He started installing on the side and I believe I was his first job on his own. I’ll provide a link to another forum re the process. If anyone is looking for a pro to do their boat, give Greg a call. http://www.bigbendfishing.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42347

You should have been here yesterday

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Replies

Took a look at the install thread and he picked solid speakers and amp. JL is the way to go on the water. Went a bit overboard on the "speaker wire" (he used tinned copper strand power cable) but only thing that impacts is the wallet. Nice clean install!

That said - Rockford Fosgate doesn't approach even decent territory when it comes to marine head units.

Did you have beefy enough power backbone cabling from your batt bank up to the helm to power the amp? Even a 4 channel JL amp like the one you got eats some amperage. A buddy recently wanted me to put a new stereo system in his boat (8 speakers and 1 12" sub) and when I looked at his electrical cabling it was a no go until we upgraded the backbone from the batt bank, installed fuse blocks, a blue top optima deep cycle, and upgraded the distribution panels.

He used 6/2 tinned wire from the amp to the battery switch ( 60 amp circuit breaker) he talked me into the RF head unit. He had great luck with them. With that said, he believed the head unit was not new ( no faceplate protector, presets not right) . It worked initially, but quit responding 2 days out. Greg came out and checked everything and determined it was a bad unit( this was last night). RF emailed me this am, then called me. Extremely apologetic, has a new unit that will be here tomorrow (Thursday). They want the old unit and don’t want me to send it back to Amazon. Pretty great customer service. I wasn’t sold on any particular head unit, but I let him talk me into it. But I do trust his judgment, as he’s done this for a living for many years, and I know absolutely nothing about any of it. I’m less than impressed that it quit working ( but who knows what the last owner did to it), but overly impressed that an American called me to fix it this morning. I’ll let you know how it comes out

edit, after reading your response. I looked up reviews and the head unit was highly reviewed ( marine speakers not so much),,, just curious what makes you think they are that sorry? I got the remote for the second station, so I’m kinda committed. But I liked how user friendly it was

RF is well know in the car audio industry but just doesn't have the kind of dedication to the marine industry that's required to churn out a quality product in a much more demanding space. As you said - you're sort of pot committed at this point. Just wanted you to have realistic expectations of the "longevity" of that particular brand.

6 AWG cable to the amp *may* be sufficient depending on the length of the circuit. What's the distance between the battery and the amp? Take it he used ANCOR wire?

Surprised you found a ton of negative reviews of JL audio speakers. I know they had an issue with a batch of speakers about a year or two ago with tweeters components that were prematurely aging. Last I heard they had fixed that issue. Both JL and WetSounds are the best in the biz when it comes to marine audio equipment. Granted, WetSounds is the king (and priced like it, too) but JL is a close runner up. Then there's everyone else when it comes to speakers.

I didn’t see bad reviews on jl speakers. Not great reviews on rf speakers, but their headunit was well reviewed. The installer has sold and serviced many brands and the rf was what he had the least problems with. He isn’t making money if components, so I trusted his judgement. Battery switch to amp was probably 10-12’. 6/2 AWG duplex tinned marine wire.